Читать книгу The Divine Need of the Rebel - James H. G. Chapple - Страница 4

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John Oxenham, an English poet, exclaimed:—

“Can’t you see the signs and portents?

Can’t you feel them in the air?

Can’t you see—you unbeliever?

Can’t you see? or don’t you care?”

Lord Byron (a century ago): “The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I forsee it.”

The past history of both the throne and the altar make bad reading. The history of both shows a struggle against social betterment. In the seventeenth century there was the struggle against the Divine Right of Kings. In the eighteenth century it was a struggle against the Divine Right of Priests. In the nineteenth century commenced in earnest the struggle of privilege against the Divine Right of the People. This truly is the only Divine right bearing the real hall-mark stamp. It will win out in the end, as the true trend of political and social evolution is from autocracy to republicanism; from the despot to Demos; from the one sovereign to a sovereign people; from homogeneity to heterogeneity; from the single-celled to the multi-celled.

Speaking in the terms of science, the king to-day is a kind of vermiform appendix, a vestige, a dangerous social organ passed on from lower stages. The cannibal king, with gay feathers in his hair, and a European monarch with crown on his head, are, in the evolutionary line, connected. The Maori Tohunga, or medicine-man, and the Archbishop of Canterbury are also by an unbroken line connected. In the same way the dug-out canoe of the savages and the Titanic were connected. Also the tube and poison darts of the New Guinea natives are linked with the super-gun throwing shells for sixty miles!

To-day the monarch is a rudiment, a vestige, setting up an inflammation in the whole social organism. It is the custom, when speaking of the British king in this manner, to get the reply: “but the British king has no power—he is only a figure-head!” Does it never occur to such, he is a very expensive figure-head? Why, then, is there such keen anxiety amongst the money-mongering circles to keep the folly going? Why? Because the king is the keystone of the arch locking imperialism, militarism, privilege, aristocracy, nationalism, and capitalism tightly together. Take out the keystone and the whole arch falls to the ground. This huge octopus enslaves the whole of the world of industry. The feelers and suckers of this social octopus are felt here in New Zealand—the results are seen in the founding of the old English aristocracy in these new lands—Governor-Generals, Baronets, Orders of the British Empire, and so on, and alas, if we are to have a New Zealand aristocracy, then we must prepare also for a New Zealand pauperism. One is the necessary result of the other.

The indictment against the throne is also the indictment against the altar. The throne demands militarism and the altar defends it. The Churches might well have some heart-searchings and ask what were their attitudes towards the once new sciences of astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, geology, evolution, and even chloroform? May they not also be wrong in their present defence of the throne and militarism? But the altar hates progress and is conservative—it would rather perpetuate fallacies and superstitions than follow the truth. In its heart it loves not Democracy and is opposed to Labour ideals—it is imperialist, nationalist, militarist, capitalist. It breathes in the narrowing air of aristocracy. The military world is the right arm of aristocracy and the altar is the left arm. The two together are the ever-ready grey-headed allies of privilege. They are both ever willing to sacrifice the last young man to the war Moloch. The truth is that neither desires to know that war has no permanent place in human affairs. Neither wishes to see that nationalism is only a temporary thing, and that the international is permanent. That a world-conscience should evolve is of no interest to them. The cultivation of such a thing is outside their plan. There is really no help from the throne or the altar. Between the two the newspapers are gagged—the educational system gripped, the middle-classes enmeshed, and the feminine mind prejudiced.

The future hope for humanity lies in the abolition of both the throne and the altar. It was a terrible utterance of one old thinker, and we hesitate to repeat it, and would not only for the germ of truth involved. Said he: “The world cannot be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest!” Neither the throne nor the altar will allow a new conception of the State. They both apparently ascribe fixity to their conception of the State, forgetting that the modern State must be the expression of the general will. They prefer tradition to rule, whereby the State may be turned periodically into a magnified drill-sergeant by the will of a coterie. They both represent that class of mind which by a fatal habit of thought links order and quiet to force and power. This means the perpetuation of the drill-sergeant, and that way lies war.

The fact is, Democracy and nationalism won’t work together, and every year will make it more clear. Ultimately, nationalism leads to bayonets, and Democracy leads to internationalism. A narrow commercialism cannot rise to universal concepts except for the purpose of exploitation. Certainly it refuses to rise to it for brotherhood; so we are faced with the distressing scene of big trade gyrating in a vicious circle of imperial-capitalism. Democratic reasoning is gallantly trying in Labour circles to make a potent revulsion in favour of international co-operation and world-wide brotherhood, and the Divine Spirit is with them—in the end success must come. Lessing well said: “I have no conception of the love of country; and it seems to me a heroic failing which I am well content to be without,” and Kant, in his “Perpetual Peace,” also well said: “The civil constitution of every State must be republican!”

The Kings

The kings are dying! In blood and flame

Their sun is setting to rise no more!

They have played too long at the ancient game

Of their bluer blood and bolted door.

Now the blood of their betters is on their hands—

The blood of the peasant, the child, the maid;

And there are no waters in all the lands

Can bathe them clean of the dark stain laid.

They have sinned in malice and craven fear—

For the sake of their tinsel have led us on

To the hate-built trench and the death-drop sheer,

But the day will come when the kings are gone.

The kings are dying! Beat, O drums,

The world-wide roll of the democrat!

O bugles, cry out for the day that comes

When the kings that were shall be marvelled at!

—Hugh J. Hughes.

Yes, the kings are dying, and it has been said shortly there will only be five kings left, i.e. the king of spades, the king of clubs, the king of hearts, the king of diamonds and King George Vth. Certainly it is discomforting to see at the present time that China is a republic and Russia is a republic and Britain retains the inflammable vermiform appendix. Every thinking man knows it has to go. A hundred years ago Byron saw it. In the very near future these oversea dominions will take action. The restlessness is seen already. The error of the altar is also the error of the throne—they aim at controlling posterity to the end of time; in a kind of insolent tyranny they desire to govern beyond the grave, or, as someone has said, they wish to be a kind of political Adam, binding posterity for ever; and we might well ask: Who is to decide the future, the living or the dead? Cervantes by his satire helped the bogus chivalry of the past to be laughed at and to die, so there is need now for another satirist to help to a natural death a bogus monarchy and aristocracy. Awakened reason will destroy the superstition connected with monarchy. The new thought of God will soon sap the autocratic relics of monarchy. The thought of God as an immanent Spirit instead of a personal despot is fatal to kings. The thought of a personal monarch is really the result of an error in thinking of God as a King of kings. But an immanent Spirit incarnated in the whole of humanity is of the essence of Democracy. In the evolution of religion we move from an extraneous personal God to an immanent Spirit. Is that autocratic or democratic? So the sovereign people will take the place of a sovereign person. Allow the doubter to read carefully I Samuel and chapters 8, 9 and 10, and he will soon see he has no affinity with earthly monarchs. Excepting in the correct view, that every man shall be a king and also a priest, “Ye shall be a kingdom of priests.” And, again: “He hath made us kings and priests unto God.” The most revolutionary prayer of all was “Thy kingdom come.” That is theocracy! when the spirit of Divinity—the spirit of peace and goodwill shall rule, that is the common Divinity within all men. When England becomes a Christian State there will be no king nor nobility. Said Burns:

“See yon birkie ca’ed a lord,

Who struts and stares and a’ that;

Though hundreds worship at his word,

He’s but a coof for a’ that.”

But the champions of the gunpowder and glory business are nearly at an end. The writer is no advocate of force, excepting the force of ideas. The prophecy of Byron must not come true in the British Empire. The only way to avoid it is to help and not hinder the true line of evolutionary progress. The last monarch has to go. The late King Edward knew that, and he is reported to have said that he himself would be the last of the line of England’s monarchs! If things cannot be altered on constitutional lines, then let Russia stand out as a finger post of warning! The executioner—the people—will arrive; in fact are arriving! Said that scholar and thinker, Goldwin Smith: “The Cromwell of this age is an intelligent, resolute and united people.”

The real crux of the problem is whether the desired change can be brought about peacefully? The following dialogue in the South-African Parliament raises a very serious point for Australia and New Zealand:—

“General Smuts made his opinion clear in the course of the debate in the Union Parliament a few months ago, upon the Bill providing for the acceptance of the mandate for South West Africa. He said he would answer various questions that had been put to him, the first of which was whether South Africa had the right to secede from the Empire. The following dialogue ensued:—

“General Hertzog: ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’

“General Smuts: I shall reply to that, I think it is my duty to reply to that, and my reply is absolutely and decisively ‘No!’ Our Constitution is laid down in writing, and our Constitution in clause 19 says the legislative power of the Union consists of Parliament of the Union, composed of the King, the Assembly, and the Senate. It is impossible and unconstitutional for either of these parts to secede from the other. The Assembly cannot secede from the King.

“General Hertzog: Can it renounce the King?

“General Smuts: No. This is not a question of status; it is a question of constitution. In terms of the Constitution the King cannot give up the Assembly.

“General Hertzog: At the request of the people?

“General Smuts: No, he cannot. Of course, by means of revolution you can do that sort of thing, but you cannot do so by constitutional means. Coming to the second question, Whether the right of veto still existed, and whether the King could veto a law for the secession of the Union from the Empire, there was, he said, no doubt as to that question. On an ordinary law there was no such thing in reality as veto, but on a question like that it was not only the King’s right, but, according to the Constitution, it was his duty to keep himself in force and connected with the Union. Where ordinary laws were concerned, the right of veto was, of course, obsolete.”

The difficulty lies in the truth—the traditions of monarchy, whether limited or unlimited ever hindering the best racial ideals of Democracy. Pure Democracy is the culminating point. So far we have only touched the outer fringe of Democracy, but we have evolved to that point of Democracy that brings us up against the Constitution, and we can foresee the impact lying ahead. The words of Byron discomfit. The world of Labour is tired of British imperialism. The best brains in the industrial sphere know Gallipoli to have been the real grave of British imperialism, and, strange to say, no tears have been shed over it.

Our concern now is with a sovereign people. The national anthem is the most unpopular song in the ranks of Labour, and Labour will win. The lines of Ebenezer Elliot concern us:

“When wilt thou save the people,

Oh, God of mercy, when?

The people, Lord, the people;

Not kings and thrones, but men?”

These are the sentiments in the world of Labour. The politicians, the clergy, the judges and magistrates seem to be unconscious of it. They move in a little atmosphere of their own, and think it is the everyday world. There will be a rude awakening. It was so in France over a century ago. The disturbances were spoken of to the queen. Said she: “They are only riots!” But they were not riots, but a revolution. “Besides,” said the queen, “we have the National Guard!” So France had, but at the crisis the National Guard sided with the people. So they ever will in the ultimate, whatever they may do during the intermediary stages. It is not merely a kinship between the working classes, but in these dominions the small circle of scholars, thinkers, and the cultured, many in high places, are also hand in hand with the workers. In America long ago the following lines were not written by a Labour agitator, but by one who had ripened in the school of the highest culture—Emerson:

“God said, I am tired of kings,

I suffer them no more:

Up to mine ear the morning brings

The outrage of the poor.

My angel his name is Freedom,

Choose him to be your king;

He shall cut pathways east and west

And fend you with his wing.”

And Shelley—poor Shelley—the most Divine of all the poets. Have a ride with him in Queen Mab’s chariot and learn his God-given message inspiration about monarchs. It were almost possible to think the Prophet Samuel had spoken the words instead of Shelley:

“These gilded flies,

That bask within the sunshine of a court,

What are they? The drones of the community!

They feed on the mechanic’s labour;

The starved hind for them compels the stubborn glebe

To yield its unshared harvest.

And yon squalid form, leaner than fleshless misery,

Drags out his life in darkness in the unwholesome mine

To glad their grandeur;

Many faint and toil

That few may know the cares and woes of sloth.”

A limited monarchy forsooth! But it costs the people over a million pounds annually to keep the Limited Monarchy, or, rather the Unlimited Mockery in existence. But the sycophants, title hunters and billet seekers will not allow monarchy to pass if they can help it. They dam up the stream of progress, and the breakaway will come! They close down the safety valve, but the explosion is only delayed. The recognitions of merit from Democracy are of little value to them, but in their dull obstinacy they help the coming change:

Soviets’ Grim Joke

The Communist Conference decided to confer the Order of the Red Flag—the highest distinction which Soviet Russia can bestow—on M. Clemenceau and Mr. Winston Churchill, “in recognition of their great work for the international revolution.”

Any sound thinker will know it is a fatal idea to put “birth” before “merit.” To do this is to produce a smug, self-satisfied spirit. England’s proverbial love of a lord must not be transplanted to these southern seas. England, where a nod from a duke is a breakfast for a fool! Blue blood forsooth! No; for us, just good red blood!

“One ruddy drop of manly blood,

The surging sea outweighs!”

We desire to be just members of Nature’s nobility, Divine democrats, where no man is called Rabbi! Rabbi! or Lord! Lord!

Let famine stalk the land, let war

Its myriad victims claim;

Let children starve in fœtid slums,

Fair women sink in shame;

Our prayers shall have the same old ring:

“The race be damned—but save the king!”